Of Broken Hearts And Computers
by Pieequals36
Summary: Sam vents. Set during ISaved Your Life. Warning: Harsh language and angst abounds. One-shot.


_A/N: _**Ok I'm getting a bit tired of all the PM's telling me how this is Creddie, how much they hate it, how there was too much swearing etc. Guys - first off it's NOT Creddie. Read between the lines on this one. In fact I'm pretty sure Creddie fans would hate this fic. Second, the swearing is there for a reason. In the first part Sam is angry, it's meant to be an uncontrollable anger. Is there swearing in the second part of this story? No, hardly any, if any. The swearing is meant to represent how out of control she feels in the situation. It's a metaphor. I'm not always gonna write happy Seddie stories. Don't get me wrong, I wanna see them frolick off in a field together but I'm not Stephanie Meyer and I don't believe that the happy ending is always the way to go. This one has a bittersweet ending. If you don't like angst or swearing this fic is not for you, see warning in summary. The reviews to this have been lovely and helpful though. I really do have some fantastic reviewers/readers whom I love to pieces. I just don't like flamers who have nothing critical to offer, they just wanna yell at me. It sucks cos I'm not getting paid to do this, I do it for fun and for the people that keep asking me to write. Anyways rant over, please do feel free to Pm me though (I promise I won't yell at you ;)) if you have any input into the story, anything you think I can improve on or anything that concerned you. On with the story those of you who are left lol**

_**I bust the windows out your car/and no it didn't mend my broken heart/I'll probably always have these ugly scars/but right now I don't care about that part//**_

_I kissed Freddie. _

She repeats it over and over to herself in the hallway, glancing slowly between both friends' doors, ironically, both closed in her face. Finally her gaze falls to her Converse clad feet and she stares down at the dark green colour. She wants to cry.

She wants to _fucking cry_ and she_ hates_ herself for it.

Sam Puckett has cried twice in her life. Once to Carly, to which she blames exhaustion and once when her father left. She promised herself then she would never cry again, and she had already broken that once. She would not cry. Not over _Fredweird Benson_. She sniffles, taking a breath. She just needs a minute. A minute to figure out what she needs to do next.

Well sanity tells her she needs to walk away. Sanity tells her to walk and keeping walking until she is as far away from both of them as possible. But Samantha Puckett is not known for sanity. In fact she's sure she's never committed a completely sane action in her sixteen short years. Kissing Freddie would be a prime example of such utter lunacy. And she's pretty sure what she's about to do would fall into a similar category.

Another breath.

She pulls off her army hat, shedding any unnecessary weight before forcing her way through his front door. She pushes past his mother, vaguely aware of her protesting strongly and following her to Freddie's bedroom. Something about "no more girls kissing her boy".

_He fucking wishes. _

"Benson!" she roars, entering his room like a hurricane. He jolts up in bed, surprised by the loud bang of his door hitting against the back wall.

"Sam," he stutters, nervously. She can see him gulp and shake, pushing himself as far back up the bed as he can manage. "Sam what are you going to do?"

She wants to answer, wants to scream at him. But he catches her eye, his gaze fixing with hers. She hates his stupid brown eyes. She hates how he looks at her. He's been looking at her like that for the past ten _fucking_ months. That's why she thought...well never mind what she thought. She was clearly insane.

_Screwin' mental patient was what she was_.

He sees it and she hates him all over again.

Her eyes.

He sees the pain there. He sees the brief flicker of emotion when she pauses in his doorway. She wonders if knows. If he knows full rightly and he just doesn't give a fuck.

Well clearly the bastard doesn't give a fuck. Otherwise it wouldn't feel like her hearts been stamped on by an army of fat people.

_Deep breaths. _

Her therapist tells her to keep breathing. No matter what, no matter how angry or frustrated she is she just needs to keep breathing. She must stop at some point because what she does next can only be blamed on a significant loss of oxygen to the brain.

"I hate you!" she screams, pulling his computer monitor clean off his desk in the corner. The processor and keyboard come with it, landing on the wooden floor with a resounding crash.

_Air comes back._

She looks at the mess on the ground; shattered glass and shards of plastic. She feels bad. She knows he prized it over anything else in his mundane little existence. But then again, he just smashed her fucking heart into a million pieces so why shouldn't she do the same to his stupid computer?

"Samantha Puckett!" she hears his mum scold from the hallway. He's watching her, she's acutely aware of his eyes on the side of her face. She hazards a glance his direction. He doesn't look mad. He doesn't even look remotely tetchy. He looks concerned.

Concerned.

_How fucking dare he show her concern? He knows what the fuck he's done. _

"I hate you," she repeats, her voice shaky. She says it quietly, her bottom lip trembling. He almost looks like he wants to stop it shaking. And she desperately wants him to. She can feel her face flickering downward, and the overwhelming wave of sadness if back. She's dizzy and sick and sad all at the same time. She turns on her heel, pushes his mother back and runs to the front door.

"You'll pay for that Miss Puckett!" Mrs Benson shouts down the hall, "Destroying property, always the little hooligan!"

She doesn't stop until she's outside. Air is around her but she still can't breathe. It's like her Dad leaving all over again.

She feels betrayed. And suddenly she's back to being angry. She sees his bike chained up on the rack outside the building. Unmistakably marked with ICarly stickers.

_Carly. _

She lets out a roar and begins to kick it repeatedly. Sam Puckett has remarkable strength when mad. She could melt glass with her anger. Flying into a blind rage, she doesn't stop until the steel of both wheels is bent and the handle bars have snapped. Stopping, she surveys the damage, people watching curiously as they pass.

_Take a picture; it'll last longer. _

She chastises herself. The computer was bad enough, now it seemed like she was on some sort of murderous mechanical rampage. Nothing is safe. Well, nothing belonging to Benson anyway. Staring at the mangled remains of his bike, she realises that if she doesn't flee the scene soon she could be faced with more than just Mrs Benson yelling at her in the street. She pushes her hands into the pockets of her camouflage hoodie and walks purposefully home.

_**I shot for the sky/I'm stuck on the ground/why do I try/I know I'm gonna fall down//I thought I could fly/so why did I drown/I don't know why it's coming down down down**_

She has become what she hated. She's a whiney-emo-Avril-Lavgine-loving teenage girl. Sitting on her bed, stereo blaring she stares at nothing in particular. Sam hasn't exactly been a girl associated with deep thoughts or feelings. She is quite happy never analysing life. She figured it out a while ago anyway – she hates life, but she loves living. Doesn't make sense? Well it doesn't make any to her either. She knew she had two constants; her mother's relentless inappropriate behaviour and her friends. She now knew she couldn't depend on one anymore.

Her phone buzzes again. Another text from Carly.

She clicks read.

_Sam. R u ok? What's up? Txt back._

Delete.

Carly knew exactly what was up. She had figured Carly to be a lot of things, a lot of great things, but selfish and self serving were never placed anywhere on that list. Sam wasn't jealous, _hell no_, she just wondered why Carly had to have everything she had? Why did she have to go there with Freddie? Kissing, well that was _their_ thing. Sure it was only that one time, and sure they promised to never ever speak of it again. But it was something she thought was just theirs. She thought it was special.

_Stupid cow._

Carly and Freddie had their own history, a whole series of moments and stories that she couldn't compete with. Until that kiss. The kiss meant that she was no longer Carly's sidekick. She was a leading lady in her own right. She could get the nerd to fall for her, to want her. Even if it was only for ten seconds on a cold fire escape. For ten seconds _she was the one_. She led the story. It was sort of nice, she begrudgingly admitted, that her and the dork had something that was just theirs. Something Carly couldn't quite touch.

Until now.

She isn't jealous of her best friend; on the contrary, she loves Carly. But sometimes, in her darker, weaker moments Sam would have liked to be just a little bit more like her. Gentle, girly, kind. If Freddie wants to kiss her, that means she can't be all bad. There must be something special there. Even if it's only the dork that sees it.

Knocking on the door.

"You look fine in the corset Mom," she says, raising her voice over the thudding music.

More knocking.

"I told you..." she mutters, clambering off her single bed lined with the window sill. She pulls open the door.

He's there.

Standing, hunched over, leaning on his crutches.

He looks sick and she feels for him. If only for a moment.

"What do_ you_ want?" she hisses, narrowing her arctic blue eyes.

"You owe me a new computer," he says, fixing her with a stony glare.

_Yeah well you owe me a new heart. _

"Yeah good luck getting that," she scoffs, closing the door. She feels him jam it open, his hand resting on the wooden frame.

"We need to talk Puckett," he informs her, eyebrows raised. She opens her mouth ready to let out a mouthful of profanities that he sure as hell deserves, but he slips inside. She thinks she could easily stop him; he is a cripple after all. But she doesn't. She doesn't know why.

Sighing, she lets the door swing shut on its hinge and turns to face him. He stands awkwardly in the centre of her room and she doesn't offer him a seat. He looks overwhelmed.

"Well?" she pushes.

"Man, I've never been in your room before. It's weird."

"So you've come to criticise my decor?" she asks, confused, "What is this? Payback a la Ty Pennington? What you gonna do next? Accuse me of choosing drab bed linen?"

"No. I just mean...it's like being surrounded by a roomful of...of you. It's weird," he repeats resolutely. He scans her room, eyeing a board of pinned up pictures on the back wall. He looks like he's going to move to it, and she steps between him and the wall.

"What do you want Benson?"

"To talk. Dude...what you did...it was messed up."

She rolls her eyes. "Whatever. I just lost my temper. No biggie."

"My one terabyte hard drive begs to differ."

She sits on the end of the bed, flattening her palms against the duvet. "Seriously? Nerd speak? That's how you plan on keeping my attention during this conversation?"

"Sam," he warns, "What the hell man? I mean one minute I'm explaining to Mom why she found me and Carly in a rather compromising position, next thing I know you're destroying my PC like some kind of...kind of...."

"Psycho?"

"Well. Yeah."

She shrugs. "I dunno."

"Ok awkward question. Are you jealous?"

Her eyes flash rage and she stands, fists clenched by her sides. "Jealous...jealous!" she mutters.

"More a stupid question then," he interjects, watching her pace the floor. "Are you gonna hit me now?"

"My counsellor says if I hit one more person, there's a very real chance I could go to prison."

He lets out a nervous laugh and stares at him.

_I'm not kidding._

He glances sideways, shifting under the weight of her glare. Something happens, something that makes her stand back and reconsider. It was similar to that flash of emotion he'd seen earlier before she flew into a blind frenzy. He imagines a little angel and devil on either side, struggling over her temper.

The angel wins. She sits back down, hands underneath her legs.

"Dude," he breathes, sitting beside her. The weight makes her fall towards him and she has to shift backwards just to maintain distance. "I kissed Carly."

"Thanks for the update."

"No I mean I kissed her. And I wanna talk to my best friend about it."

"Well then go! I'm not stopping you from visiting Gibby!" she exclaims, gesturing wildly.

"Sam." The way he says her name sends an involuntary shiver down her spine. "Sam. _You're_ my best friend."

Her heart breaks and soars at the same time. It's horribly paradoxical and she doesn't dwell on it. She compares it to the moment a suicidal person most experience right after they finally commit the act. That moment between life and death where you feel elated you finally freed yourself and sad that you gave up.

"You must have very few friends then Benson, if you consider me your best friend," she chokes out. He chuckles and reaches out, inexplicitly taking her hand in his.

"Well I do. Even if you did just murder my favourite possession."

_Keep breathing._

"I mean dude you're the only person I can be myself around. I don't have to pretend to be anything around you. I mean your opinions pretty low of me already so what else could I do huh?"

_Staring. Just watching their hands._

"It was amazing you know? It was like everything I've ever wanted. Finally I'd completed the jigsaw."

She wonders how long he'll keep stabbing her heart like this. She wonders if he'll let her breathe again. And what's worse, she can't even bring herself to be mad at him. Heck, the nerd _deserves_ to be happy. So she tries to focus on anything but the pain. Anything but the sickness.

"But Sam," he whispers, his other hand brushing hair from her face, "I won't do it anymore. Not if it means I lose you. _I can't lose you_."

The words hung between them, like some sort of unspoken suggestion. Some unanswered question. She looks at him, and he cocks his head to his side.

_What's going on between us?_

Her eyelids flutter.

_You know. You know full well._

His hand makes its way across her cheek and into the roots of her hair, holding her there.

_What do I do?_

Her bottom lip pouts and quivers, her eyes searching his. She leans forward, touching her forehead to his, both keeping their eyes open, both focusing on the others lips.

_I don't know._

In what is perhaps the most tender moment of Sam's life, perhaps one of the only times where she has _craved_ human affection, she decides for what is also the first time, not to be selfish. She decides to let go.

"You won't," she chokes, "You're much too much fun to torture."

Their eyes meet, and she's sure she sees disappointment there. "Now get off me dork," she sniffles, pushing him back, "I don't want your germs. Carly might but I don't."

The joke falls flat, partly as it seems Freddie isn't even listening anymore. He gets up, assembling his crutches comfortably. She watches him, feeling small on her bed.

"So how does this work now? Am I the third wheel? The obviously gorgeous and special third wheel but third wheel nonetheless?" she laughs. He looks at her solemnly.

"You're _never_ the third wheel Puckett," he leans in and kisses her forehead, "Ever."

He hobbles off, pausing in the doorway. But whatever he stopped for is waved off and he leaves her alone, pressing her hands down hard on the mattress. After what seems like hours, agonising hours, she stands, making her way to the picture board. She lifts one of the three of them, looks at it, before tearing the image and sticking it back up. Freddie and Carly smile back at her, arms around each other.

Everything is how it should be as she chucks the image of herself in the trashcan.

The story got its happy ending. Even if it did leave behind a broken computer and a broken heart.

_**Cos all of the stars/are fading away/just try not to worry/you'll see them someday//take what you need/and be on your way/and stop crying your heart out//**_


End file.
